[CobrastanJorji]

It's not just the censorship. Let's say Google opens up in China and then a month later China comes to them and says "we need the names of everyone who searched for the term 'Uyghur concentration camp' and lives in such and such region." Google then has two choices: give over the names to the Chinese government or immediately pack up and leave China.

It's practically a given that China will eventually demand this of Google, which means that Google has presumably already evaluated this possibility and decided to go into China anyway.

[JeromeLon]

Google could do it in a much more transparent way than others, for example by stating "Here is what we know about you, and this information may be given away to the government if you proceed with a search that they considered dangerous".

I think it would be better than the current situation, where Chinese people are left with a poor quality search engine, which won't find a good answer to the question, report them to the government, and do it in a very secretive way.

[cjmoran]

Google can't know in advance what the Chinese authorities are going to consider a "problematic" search.